By the light of the moon

maybe even time off your sentence, you'd volunteer
for just about anything. They were hardened criminals, but this was
an inhumane thing I did to them—'
    'A wicked, wicked thing,' Lantern said, as though admonishing a
naughty child.
    'Yes, it was. I admit it. A wicked thing. I was—'
    'So,' said Dylan impatiently, 'when some of these prisoners
dropped sixty IQ points, like you said, your partners started
having nightmares about hordes of attorneys thick as
cockroaches.'
    'No. Those who collapsed intellectually or self-destructed in
some other manner – they weren't of concern to us. Prison
officials just filled in false information on their death
certificates, and no one could link them to us.'
    'Another wicked, wicked thing,' said Lantern, and clucked his
tongue in disapproval. 'The wicked, wicked things just never
stop.'
    'But if someone like Manuel, our firestarter, ever got loose and
burned his way through customs at the border, got into San Diego
and went nuts there, destroying whole blocks of the city, hundreds
if not thousands of people... then maybe we couldn't distance
ourselves from him. Maybe he'd talk about us to someone. Then...
liability suits from here to the end of the century.'
    'This is an excellent Chardonnay,' Lantern declared, 'if anyone
would like to reconsider. No? You're just leaving more for me. And
now we come to the sad part of the tale. The sad and frustrating
part. An almost tragic revelation. Tell them the sad part,
Lincoln.'
    Proctor's unnerving dreamy smile had faded and brightened and
faded. Now it vanished. 'Just before they shut down my labs and
tried to eliminate me, I'd developed a new generation of
nanobots.'
    'New and improved,' Lantern said, 'like new Coke or like adding
a new color to the M&M spectrum.'
    'Yes, much improved,' Proctor agreed, either missing his host's
sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. 'I've worked the bugs out of it.
As I've proved with you, Dylan, with you, Ms. Jackson. And with
you, as well, Shepherd? With you, as well?'
    Shep stood with his head bowed, saying nothing.
    'I'm eager to hear what the effects have been with all of you,'
said Lincoln Proctor, finding his smile once more. 'This time the
quality of the subjects is what it should always have been. You are
much better clay. Working with those criminal personalities,
disaster was inevitable. I should've understood that from the
start. My fault. My stupidity. But now, how have you been lifted
up? I'm desperately interested to hear. What has been the
effect?'
    Instead of answering Proctor, Jilly said to Parish Lantern, 'And
how do you fit into this? Were you one of his investors?'
    'I'm neither a billionaire nor an idiot,' Lantern assured her.
'I had him on my program a few times because I thought he was an
entertaining egomaniacal nutball.'
    Proctor's smile froze. If glares could have scorched, Proctor
would have reduced Parish Lantern to a cinder as readily as the
late Manuel had apparently done to others.
    Lantern said, 'I was never rude to him or let on what I thought
of this insanity of forced evolution of the human brain. That's not
my style. If a guest is a genius, I let him win friends and
influence people on his own, and if he's a lunatic, I'm happy to
let him make a fool of himself without my assistance.'
    Although color flooded into Proctor's face at this offense, he
looked no healthier. He rose from the chair and pointed the pistol
at Lantern instead of at Dylan. 'I've always thought you were a man
of vision. That's why I came to you first, with the new generation.
And this is how I'm repaid?'
    Parish Lantern sipped the last of the Chardonnay in his glass,
savored it, swallowed. Ignoring Proctor, he spoke to Dylan and
Jilly: 'I'd never met the good doctor face to face. I'd always
interviewed him live by telephone. He showed up on my doorstep five
days ago, and I was too polite to kick his ass into the street. He
said he wished to discuss something of importance that would serve
as a segment for my show. I was kind enough to invite him into my
study for a brief meeting. He repaid this kindness with chloroform
and a hideous... horse syringe.'
    'We're familiar with it,' Dylan said.
    Putting aside his empty wineglass, Lantern rose from his chair.
'Then he left me with the warning that his partners, half crazed
with the prospect of litigation, were intent on killing him and
anyone he injected, so I'd better not try to report him to the
police. Within hours I was going through some terrifying